Black Butler: Contracts
by Dead Dawn
Summary: A series of brutal murders sets Ciel Phantomhive and his demonic butler on a collision course with a young street urchin and an enigmatic old man, both of whom possess their own dark secrets and sinister intentions. What is the Guiding Star?


Black Butler: Contracts

**PROLOGUE**

The dark, murky cobbled street was unusually empty.

Had he been sober, the man would have been able to deduce why he felt so uneasy. Normally the corners of each street played host to prostitutes, the alleys to greasy thugs and the doorways to children who were so thin and deathly pale that they looked as though they had recently escaped from a morgue. But something (no-one quite knew what) had driven them away. Just for tonight.

Only he, and a small dog whose eyes flickered cautiously from side to side, remained, though he wished dearly to be somewhere else.

A flicker of movement caught his eye.

Even in his inebriated state, the man was able to dash into the shadows with the speed of an acrobat. He peered out from his dark hiding place, hoping now to understand the true nature of his unease.

The first to emerge from the unnaturally black alley across the street was a figure who felt out of place in his current surroundings. It was a small, slim boy whose head sported a forest of grimy blonde strands. Had it not been for the mud that covered his face, and the gruesome scar that stretched from the area above his right eye straight down to his chin, he would have appeared princely, almost angelic. He was clad in clothes that hung so loosely from his body that they looked like tattered burlap rags, and a long brown coat that was far too big for him, and gave him a slightly hunched appearance. The left sleeve was torn at the elbow, but his right hand was covered by the folds of muddy cloth.

A second figure emerged. The man, his unexplainable fear peaking, slipped back further into the safety of the shadows.

This second figure, whose appearance reminded those who saw him of a skeleton, stood in stark contrast to a his childish companion. He was tall, almost impossibly so, and his limbs were so frail and bony that they made the man shudder in repulsion. He wore a long brown coat, like the boy, but his was too small, and allowed people to gaze at his slender arms. His hair crept out from underneath a wide-brimmed hat in tendrils of bleak grey that hung limply over his heavily scarred face.

And his eyes… his eyes! His eyes were small, beady balls of emerald glass set deep into his skull, and they seemed to observe his surroundings with the keen gaze of a predator, or the playful curiosity of a child. The man could not tell which.

A single glance from the "skeleton man" made the man's breath catch in his throat. He was sober. Christ, he was sober! He hadn't felt sober in years. Now he yearned once more for a bottomless mug of ale in which to drown himself. Anything to gouge the memory of the "skeleton man" from his mind.

The "skeleton" placed his hands upon the boy's shoulders, and the man saw the child flinch visibly. A menacing smile crept across the creature's (for he gave off an aura that did not feel quite human) pale lips.

The two figures turned and entered a small, dilapidated building. The man relaxed, his muscles sagging, though his eyes never left the warped portal into which they had just entered.

* * *

Several hours later, as startled, confused onlookers crowded around the building into which the boy and the man had entered, a carriage pulled up. It was a black carriage, pulled by black horses, and atop it sat a man whose appearance was strikingly elegant to a point where he drew the attention of several onlookers. A man with skin like finely carved marble, hair like fluid strands of darkness and eyes that seemed to betray knowledge far beyond the age that the rest of his appearance implied.

Sebastian Mikaelis alighted from atop his mobile perch, the pitch black tails of his jacket fluttering silently behind him, and he glided smoothly across the rough cobbles. The door to the carriage swung open with the lightest of touches.

The figure that stepped out could not have been more surprising to those who saw him. In the place of the finely dressed, princely man who should have emerged was a boy; a boy of about 13 years, whose hair was a shade of blue-green and whose right eye was obscured by an eye patch.

Sebastian placed his hand upon the shoulder of Ciel Phantomhive, his master, much as the "skeleton man" had placed his hand upon the shoulder of the young urchin just hours before, and smiled.

The man and the boy stepped into the building.

A man in the crowd, who's hands still quivered in terror at what he had seen the night before, felt a renewed rush of horror as he watched these new arrivals disappear from view. Slowly, the drunk, still sober, turned and fled.


End file.
